Ilana Mercer, August 24, 2012

“A member of this global, glamorous elite; people who are at home in London and New York” is how Byron York wryly and aptly described economist Niall Ferguson, who has penned the Newsweek article, “Hit The Road, Barack: Why We Need a New President.” The piece has enraged the Obama-Head media. “It is very fashionable among [this global elite] to support President Obama” is how York, a Washington Examiner correspondent, set the scene for Professor Ferguson’s defiance.

From the perspective of the libertarian, Ferguson’s case against that dreadful cur, Barack Obama, is unremarkable. It adds up to a statistics-backed argument for one statist (Mitt Romney) over the other (Obama). In other words, “My big-government guy is better than yours.”

On foreign policy, Ferguson accuses Obama of not being enough of a global central-planner, which this neoconservative equates with statesmanship. He wants “boots on the ground” practically everywhere. Unbridled, bellicose American exceptionalism is Ferguson’s idea of diplomacy. Indeed, Mitt Romney’s foreign policy is Obama’s with a daisy cutter on top.

When it comes to domestic policy, Prof. Ferguson cleaves to “official” unemployment numbers, rather than counting the jobless, for which not even the U6, real-unemployment rate accounts. Still, from the fact that only 59 percent of the population is working versus the 64 percent of five years ago—it does not follow that Republicans, who set in motion devastating processes of stagnation and deterioration of their own, ought to be exonerated of blame for the current malaise, or trusted to change their ways.

Ferguson’s grasp of GDP is in all likelihood off too; official GDP numbers are a gambit, measuring not wealth created but money spent. As a Republikeynesian would put it: Democrats have caused “demand” to decrease. Boohoo.

As far as the Killer Drone’s actions abroad go, Ferguson objects not so much to Obama’s stealth killing of innocents the world over, but to the loss of “crucial intelligence” assets caused by the president’s “assassination program.”

For fear mongering over China, Ferguson is second only to his nominee, Romney. “China,” he has pontificated in the past, “contributes almost nothing to stability in the oil-producing heartland of the Arabian deserts and barely anything to the free movement of goods through the world’s strategic sea lanes. … In terms of geopolitics, China today is the world’s supreme free rider.”

Fostering “the free movement of goods”: Silly me! So that’s the US’s mission to the Middle East. I suspect the millions of Iraqis who’ve been displaced and murdered pursuant to our invasion in 2003 would dispute that curious notion.

Chinese mercantilism is not free trade, but it is far better than American militarism.

Nevertheless, Ferguson has performed a small service, in so far as he has offered the first comprehensive, utterly damning case against Barack Hussein Obama, from establishment intelligentsia’s perspective. Easily his greatest feat, however, is to have admitted that Barack Obama doesn’t comprehendthe issues about which he is expected to decide; to intimate that the president is a product of—how shall we put it?—political grooming.

“You can’t just march in and make that argument and then have him [Obama] make a decision,” [Lawrence] Summers told [Peter] Orszag, “because he doesn’t know what he’s deciding.”

About the president’s comprehension skills, the one Harvard professor seconds the assessment of the other, quoted above. Writes Ferguson: “I have heard similar things said off the record by key participants in the president’s interminable ‘seminar’ on Afghanistan policy.”

Now, that is remarkable.

When “You Can’t Fix Stupid” was published (April 15, 2011), legions of WND readers wrote in to patiently and laboriously explain to me that Barack Obama was not “stupid,” only evil. An evil genius, if you like.

If indirectly, Ferguson disproves that misconception.

Yet I have to wonder who here is the real schmo—the man who was led to believe throughout his “career” trajectory that he was up to the task, or the sycophants and enablers, equally represented among the American people, and among those who’ve pirated the ghost-ship of state. All have helped enforce Barack Obama’s delusions of grandeur.